


I. The Magician

by heartdyed



Series: Rider-Waite-Smith [2]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V
Genre: Gen, Not Canon Compliant, Vampire AU, emetophobia warning, gratuitious violence, late posting of old fic, not even vaguely attempting to be canon compliant, ruri is yuzu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-03-08 02:59:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13449099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartdyed/pseuds/heartdyed
Summary: The Magician, the first trump of the tarot after the unnumbered Fool, typically is an omen that foretells the path to future possibilities, and for better, higher uses for one's own power.  (Shun watches one possibility in the power they're gaining play out before him.)---The scene belongs less in reality and more in a cartoon with more budget given to red ink than writers.  It doesn't make any sense.  It's just twisted.  Yuto rips a pipe from the wall and Shun throws his silvered knife, straight into the vampire's ribs.He keeps his eyes on Yuto.  "What were you doing?Playingwith it?"





	I. The Magician

The vampire, the couple that looked the age Yuto's parents do in the photographs, Yuto wounded with a bludgeon of broken concrete in his hands— Shun springs for the pair. Yuto can take care of himself in a fight, but not if he's _distracted_. The fight has dragged on long enough, and Yuto's been stalling, playing victim to keep attention on himself. The only way to make him take care of himself is to leave him no choice, no one to play hero for. If Shun wants to help Yuto in this fight, saving the bystander would-be-victims is the best course of action even if he doesn't _like_ it.

The woman screams and the man falls back against the wall as Shun leaps for them and grabs an arm around each waist, yanking them upwards with him as he jumps for the rooftop— they're terrified that he's _reinforcements_. His speed allows them no time to wrestle from his grasp before they're on the roof and he tugs his bandanna lower as they flinch back after being dropped. He opens his mouth wide— flat teeth. " _Human_ ," he clarifies and they go practically boneless in relief, and he snaps at them, "Don't relax— get moving! Height means nothing! Stay here and you'll end up in the way _again_." He is not a shelter, or a shield, and his words make them see that, he only bought them time. The man staggers up and the woman pulls him to the fire escape, down the other side, away from the fight.

Shun turns back towards it. He scans the surrounding buildings, sharp eyes scouting for other vampires lying in wait to ambush but he doesn't finish before a shout cuts through the air— He leaps from the rooftop before it registers that it wasn't Yuto's voice pitched in pain or warning or terror. 

No, it's a sound was empty with triumph. It sounds nothing like Yuto at all, but what he sees _looks_ nothing like him at all. Yuto is dusted in gore, his mask dangling by a strap from his ear, striking repeatedly with the crumbling slab of rock in his hands heedless of his wounds. The vampire struggles to get away as he brings it down with crushing force and slams it into the head like they were kids at the beach with watermelon. The corpse twitches and its arms try to shove away, but without the head it can't see a where is freedom and where is the wall, and it soon ceases to matter altogether. Yuto's second strike connects, and its spine and elbows crunch in an unpleasant snap in the wrong direction, and the force propels it against the wall it couldn't find. The head is starting to heal, its face inflating around the repairing skeletal framework as Yuto drops the cement stab down to crush the legs so it can't run.

The scene belongs less in reality and more in a cartoon with more budget given to red ink than writers. It doesn't make any sense. It's just twisted. Yuto rips a pipe from the wall and Shun throws his silvered knife, straight into the vampire's ribs. 

He keeps his eyes on Yuto. " _What were you doing?_ **Playing** with it?" He's caught wrong-footed, accusing a comrade, and he hears his voice cracking out of its habitual rough growl towards something honest and scared. He'd never seen Yuto like that before. 

"Destroying." Yuto raises up his goggles, one lens spider-webbed with cracks. "Destroying _all of it_." His eyes are bright and with the mask hanging aside his pronunciation reveals all of his sharpened teeth, his mouth like a buzzsaw. "Everything."

"A waste! Silver, wood, and _light_ is what it takes to kill them." He circles as he talks, stooping to retrieve his knife from the twice-dead corpse. He doesn't sheath it, but keeps it in a combat grip in his hand.

Yuto's eyes follow him, his knife. " _Everything_ ," he repeats, "will be destroyed!"

Shun's stomach churns and he feels himself on the precipice of regret and takes the plunge before doubt can stop him. He feels his pocket for a pressurized sleep-gas canister. Yuto's stronger than him: Shun won't win in a fair fight, so he has no intention of giving one. He charges and leaps, barely clearing a swing from Yuto's pipe, that slams the wall with a force great enough to dent it— the pipe, _and_ the wall. Shun catches a window-sill edge and hoists himself up with one hand in the moment it takes Yuto to pull the pipe free and pulls the pin and aims the sleep-gas canister at Yuto before diving inside through the closed window. He rolls through broken glass and pulls his bandana back up, backing up against the wall, as far from the open window as possible.  
Waiting is tortuous, counting each second. One one thousand, two one thousand, six, fourteen, twenty-five. . . He edges back towards the window. Yuto is passed out, it looks like, face-down on the alley-way asphalt. Shun takes a moment to breath then takes out his communicator to into it, " _Ruri._ Come, I need you! Coordinates same as planned."

When they're on missions, she asks no questions. Without a moment's delay her voice comes back to his ears, distorted by the crackle of transmission, "On it!"

He watches from the window, waiting for Yuto to twitch and rise to his feet with all the grace of a big-screen horror, but he stays down. Shun doesn't count how long it takes Ruri to run into sight at the mouth of the alley, but jumps down when she does. It's only when he lands that he realizes he's bleeding from the glass, but Ruri doesn't comment if she does notice. She says "Sorry I'm late," It's not, what have you two idiots been up to. That Shun had been waiting away from Yuto, rather than by his side speaks volumes.

One of them will have to check.

Shun can't protect Ruri from a lot of things, but he can do this much. He pushes himself from crouch to standing, and forces himself to take a step closer. Then another, and again, all the way to kneeling at Yuto's side. He put one hand gingerly to Yuto's throat, two of his fingers feeling the blood flow. He thinks he can hear the silence of breath— him and Ruri holding there's, and Yuto. . .  
His skin is not as cold as he thought, under the sticky still-drying blood. Two of his fingers pressed to his neck, through the skin he can feel it.

There's still a pulse. He breathes and looks up. The bandanna and tinted glasses hide his expression so there's a moment more of anticipatory terror on her face before he breaks the silence, "Still beating." 

Her covered face doesn't betray anything, but he thinks he sees less tension in her stance. But she still comes forward to check for herself. After a moment, she agrees, relief in her voice. "Still human."  
She helps take him back to their old safehouse, and bandages him up. Shun doesn't want the rest of the resistance to see him right now, not if he wakes up and acts the same. Not if something in him had snapped like a bow-string and the self-control that stretched taut in his mind that held back his animal fury had gone slack.

It's almost dawn when Yuto wakes, with Ruri holding his hand and Shun standing sentinel at the door. He's confused and it shows on his face. Yuto lifts his free hand towards Shun and sees it's still sticky with blood, and then his face drops and he looks a little ill. 

Ruri distracts him with a demand, squeezing his hand tight. "What were you thinking, scaring us like that?"

"I was thinking. . ." he starts, then trails off. His eyes widen, and the sick look gets worse. The gore that's still splattered over him, the suspected source churns his stomach. Belatedly, Shun realizes they should have cleaned him up. Yuto's kindness had no place on the battlefield, and he regretted every kill, regardless if they were a stranger or a familiar face, but maybe there could be a place for respecting it in the safe house, or at least to hide the evidence from the senseless brutal _useless_ blows went against all of him.

Nausea rises on his face and he twists away from Ruri, her grip leaving crescent marks where her nails dug into the back of his hand in worry. His hands clasp tight over his mouth, chest heaving as Ruri lets go to run for a bucket and delivers it to him just in time for him to let go. He turns to the side, away from them to try and hid the sight with his back— he heaves up nothing but bile and black blood.

Ruri puts a hand on his back, letting him purge himself of everything, waiting. He breaths heavily, then wipes at his mouth. "I was thinking—" he tries again, and shudders, shaking his head.  
Instead, he quietly confesses. "It doesn't matter. I don't want to hurt anyone, anymore," and curls up in on himself. Ruri watches Yuto but Shun's gaze strays to the wall. His eyes are gold beneath his dark lenses, and he can see clear as day what's sitting there gleaming on the shelves. Ruri lowers the bucket down, and her eyes stray there too— to the carefully labeled bottles of vampire blood— Magpie, Dracul, Diva. Yuto's rages, his sharp teeth, Shun's eyes, the symptoms that came with their strength, they knew the cause. They had once promised to do whatever it takes.  


Until they had their city back, they couldn't stop.


End file.
